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Nineteen states and the District of Columbia are suing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Department of Health and Human Services over plans to prevent government payments for transgender treatments.
Last week, Secretary Kennedy announced he would stop Medicare and Medicaid payments to any healthcare provider that continues to offer so-called “gender-affirming care” to minors.
The lawsuit, which is led by the State of Oregon, alleges this proposal “exceeds the Secretary’s authority and violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Medicare and Medicaid statutes.”
Oregon’s Attorney General, Dan Rayfield, said in a statement on Wednesday it’s wrong to claim “gender-affirming care” is “unsafe and ineffective.”
Rayfield was referring to an earlier statement made by Secretary Kennedy, in which he vowed, “Under my leadership, and answering President Trump’s call to action, the federal government will do everything in its power to stop unsafe, irreversible practices that put our children at risk.”
Joining Rayfield in the lawsuit are Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), and the Democratic attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington and D.C.
A week before Christmas, the House of Representatives voted to criminalize gender-transition procedures for minors.
Introduced by outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the Protect Children’s Innocence Act would impose fines and/or up to 10 years in prison on anyone who “knowingly performs, or attempts to perform, genital or bodily mutilation on another person who is a minor”; “knowingly chemically castrates a minor”; or knowingly “facilitates or consents to female genital mutilation of a minor” or “transports a minor for the purpose of the performance of female genital mutilation on such minor.” The bill includes exceptions for procedures that are meant to address actual medical issues, rather than purposes relating to gender confusion.
The bill passed with three Democrats crossing the floor to support it: Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, and Don Davis of North Carolina. At the same time, four Republicans broke ranks to vote against: Mike Lawler of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Gabe Evans of Colorado, and Mike Kennedy of Utah.
Fox News reports that prior to passage, Greene came into conflict with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) over whether certain details passed constitutional muster.
Roy, a member of the House Rules Committee, supports banning youth gender transitions but proposed an amendment that would have limited criminal liability to conduct that “falls within federal jurisdiction.” Greene claimed he “refuses to protect children”; Roy countered that “the constitution matters & we should not bastardize it to use ‘interstate commerce’ to empower federal authorities.” He ultimately backed down.
To reach President Donald Trump’s desk, the bill would require 60 votes, meaning zero Republican defections and seven Democrats crossing the aisle. This fall, Trump has started demanding that Senate Republicans eliminate the filibuster so they can pass a wider range of legislation with their 53-seate majority, but so far GOP leaders have resisted, fearful of the transformative policies Democrats could push through as a result the next time they regain power.
A large body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically-transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
